Two New Spam Laws in Japan

An anonymous reader submits: "The Daily Yomiuri, one of the major newpapers in Japan, reports (in English) that two new laws aimed at spam have just come into effect. In short, the laws require that spammers honor 'opt-out,' provide a valid return address, indicate the commercial nature of the message in the title, and never use randomly generated email addresses. The laws were pressured into effect by NTT DoCoMo, who complained that as much as 84% of all email circulating on its system (i.e., cell phones) is sent at random."

Comments

Concerning

[Bouncings]

I'm starting to get concerned about the growing number of laws regulating spam. A lot of spam I get says "This email cannot be considered spam because it is in compliance with XYZ"

So my question is, are these moderate anti-spam laws really helping or hurting? I see them, in the long run, offering some legitimacy to spam. In that these laws are so weak, that they don't really curb spam, but because they are the only regulation on the topic, spammers will point their ISPs to these laws and demand service.

I'd say maybe the community should fight all laws but out-right bans on spam.

Re:Concerning

[DeadMeat (TM)]

The trick is, they're not in compliance with anything. Spam usually refers to Senate bill S.1618 or House bill HR 3133, neither of which was passed into law. They would have both required working opt-out addresses and legitimate headers, so virtually all spam wouldn't have been in compliance with it anyway.

Incidentally, setting your mail filters to delete all mail with "S.1618" in the body is a terrific spam filter, since no legitimate mail ever refers to it, and nearly all spam does.